Grenfell Tower (Wikipedia)
London fire officials say more than a thousand buildings in the British capital are now unsafe in the event of a fire, with a large majority of those suffering from the same problem that contributed to the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze.
London Fire Brigade, the city’s fire and rescue service, recently added 39 buildings to its list of structures with fire safety defects, bringing the total to just over 1,000 structures, according to Property Week.
Fire Brigade Commissioner Andy Roe called it an “unacceptable milestone” to pass the 1,000 mark. “There is a far higher number of high-risk buildings in London than anywhere else in the country, and it’s clear that there has not yet been a complete culture change when it comes to fire safety in residential buildings,” Roe said, according to the report.
More than 700 of those buildings had defects related to cladding, and the majority of those are over 59 feet tall. Highly flammable exterior cladding greatly contributed to the fire that destroyed the 23-story Grenfell Tower in West London in 2017, killing 72 people. That cladding was manufactured by U.S.-based company Arconic.
Later that year, inspectors found 433 buildings in the city had similar cladding, but only about 100 had been repaired by mid-2019.
London and the British government vowed to replace cladding on 150 public housing complexes, and committed around $250 million to help landlords replace cladding on their buildings.
[PW] — Dennis Lynch
